Top of the Pops 22 June 1990

 

Jakki Brambles: “Hello. Good evening and welcome along to Top of the Pops on a Friday night thanks to the lovely little World Cup. Rockin' good show for you tonight. We're going to start off with a band who are at number thirty five in the chart. They've just been entertaining fifty thousand East Berliners. Welcome along, Magnum.”

 [35] MAGNUM: Rockin'Chair. England v Egypt (Group F) live from Cagliari, 7.30pm on Thursday. It's time to play schedule billiards. Eastenders moves to 7pm Thursday which canons Top of the Pops to Friday at 7.40pm after Wogan. It's basically a repeat of the schedule reordering which took place on 18/05/1990 when the FA Cup Final replay moved everything around in exactly the same way. Top of the Pops gets dropped neatly in to the Friday night schedule so something called Paradise can start, as always, at 8.10pm.

“John Taylor is the formidable force that stands between prosperity and catastrophe when a lumber company comes to town to clear his mountain.” Sounds exciting.

 

Less exciting is Magnum (what a link). “You want love, You get hate.” Buzz. I'm sorry I'm going to have to stop you there. Only the presence of the Quireboys at the start of the year stops me from describing Magnum as the dreariest rock band of 1990.

Apparently Magnum also appeared on Top of the Pops back in 1988 (05/05/1990). What did I say about them on that occasion? Oh. Nothing. I was more interested in what hosts Bruno Brookes and Adrian John were wearing.

Come on... I can say something nice about Magnum. Thinks. Unironically, the cover of Goodnight L.A. -the album Rockin' Chair is taken from- is brilliant. John, please insert jpeg here if you can find a picture.

[4] ROXETTE: It Must Have Been Love. Promo VT.

CHARTS: 40 TO 31

[19] BIG FUN & SONIA: You've Got A Friend. Raising money for the Childline charity. This is serious. Therefore Big Fun and Sonia must sing seated. If they danced it might appear frivolous.

However, 76% of the appeal of Big Fun and Sonia is the fanatic glazed-expression dancing. How to square that circle? What if... there was a bloke playing the saxophone on one of the studio gantries? Would that substitute enough to compensate for the lack of dancing?

Answer. No.

(John- The `bloke playing the saxophone` is only the legendary Gary Barnacle who gets a billing on the single cover (above) though not a picture. He's one of that elite group of oddly monikered sax players like Raphael Ravenscroft and Stanley Stroopwafel) 

Going back to shifting Top of the Pops from Thursday to Friday. For the May 1990 move, I couldn't work out what happened to the radio schedule. It looks as if Radio 1 simply cancelled the simulcast rather than try to move it to Friday.

Here it's equally odd. BBC Genome which (all together now) takes its information from the relevant Radio Times lists Top of the Pops on Friday for BBC1; obviously they knew in advance how the matches would affect the television schedule because my understanding is, the World Cup is planned at least a couple of months ahead.

So, if the Radio Times knew Top of the Pops would move from Thursday to Friday, why does BBC Genome list the Radio 1 stereo broadcast as taking place at 7pm on Thursday? Did Radio 1 broadcast the audio version in the usual slot, a day ahead of BBC1? It certainly looks like it.

[8] WILSON PHILLIPS: Hold On. Promo VT.

BREAKERS

[29] RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS: Taste the Pain

[32] BRUCE DICKINSON: All The Young Dudes

[37] DOGS D'AMOUR: Victims Of Success

[30] YAZZ: Treat Me Good. A common theme of tonight's edition is, I don't remember any of the songs featured in the studio. Magnum? No. Big Fun (& Sonia)? No. This one from Yazz? No. June 1990 was the end of my A-Level exams. Maybe I was slumped exhausted on a chaise longue like the heroine of a Victorian melodrama? And yet, I remember It Must Have Been Love and Hold On, so clearly I was engaging with popular culture.

Yazz's song will, next week, peak at [20].

[20] CRAIG McLACHLAN & CHECK 1-2: Mona. Promo VT.

CHARTS: 30 to 11

[3] LUCIANO PAVAROTTI: NESSUN DORMA. Promo VT.

[12] MC TUNES VERSUS 808 STATE: The Only Rhyme That Bites. Promo VT.

TOP 10

[1] ELTON JOHN: Sacrifice/Healing Hands. England deposed after only two weeks. It's an early bath for them. Etc. And other footballing cliches. Let's hope this isn't an omen for the 1990 World Cup. Meanwhile, in the actual World Cup, England had made it through the group stage and were preparing for their first knockout stage match again Belgium on 26/06/1990.

Jakki Brambles claims this is “Elton's first ever Number One” Surely not, Jakki? What about all those other songs of his?

Nope. All the good early ones you remember tended to stall in the Top 10. Rocket Man, for example got to [2] and was kept off the Number One slot by T. Rex, Metal Guru.

Crocodile Rock got to [5], beaten by the unholy quadrology that was Donny Osmond, Gilbert O'Sullivan, The Osmonds, and Chuck Berry's My Ding-A-Ling.

Don't Go Breaking My Heart did get to Number One in 1976 but under the harsh rules of Jakki Brambles it doesn't count because it was a duet with Kiki Dee.

(John- Even `I'm Still Standing` whose ubiquity makes people think it must have been a chart topper actually peaked at number four.)

Still, now that Elton John has qualified for the Number One position under the Brambles Rules she's ready to congratulate him. She bounds on stage at the end of the song for a ten second interview:

Jakki Brambles: “Oh. Congratulations, how you feeling?”

Elton John: “Thank you very much, very well, thank you.”

Jakki Brambles: “And I believe all the money is going to charity as well.”

Elton John: “Yes it is. Yeah.”

Jakki Brambles: “Which charities?”

Elton John: “All AIDS charities. Four AIDS charities.”

Jakki Brambles: “Cheers Elton, thank you very much and well done.”

[25] M.C. HAMMER. U Can't Touch This. Promo VT. Gary Davies next week.

 Performance of the week: I'm really tempted to say no one, but that's a bit glib. Elton John, Sacrifice, I guess. Although he's just sitting at the keyboard, as always.